When our troops entered Richmond, among other rebel documents found was
a bill, offered in secret session of the rebel House of Representatives,
January 30th, 1865, establishing a Secret Service Bureau, for the
employment of secret agents, "either in the Confederate States, or
within the enemy's lines, or in any foreign country," and authorizing
the chief officer "to organize such a system _for the application of new
means of warfare approved_, and of secret service agencies, as may tend
best to secure the objects of the establishment of the bureau."
The trial, conviction, sentence, and execution of Capt. Beall, for
piracy on the lakes, and of Kennedy, for incendiarism in New York, are
still fresh in the recollection of our readers. That these men were
acting under instructions from the bureau of secret service of Jeff.
Davis, no rational person can doubt. These acts were but incidents in
the grand conspiracy at the North; the guilty parties, who suffered
death, were but the instruments of others, and the members of the secret
organizations, who were cognizant of these acts and purposes, though yet
unwhipped of justice, are more guilty, in the sight of Heaven, than
the wretches who undertook the execution of the hellish design, and for
which they suffered ignominious death.
After the discovery of the purposes and acts of the leaders of the Sons
of Liberty in Illinois, in co-operation with rebels, and the arrests
detailed in a former chapter, a Military Commission was convened in
Cincinnati for the trial of the prisoners, Morris, Walsh, Grenfell,
Anderson, Daniels, Cantril, Marmaduke and Semmes, upon a charge of
conspiring to sack and burn Chicago, and to liberate the prisoners in
Camp Douglas.
The Commission consisted of the following named officers:
C.D. Murray, Colonel 89th Indiana Volunteers, President Commission.
Ben. Spooner, Colonel 83d Indiana Volunteers. N.C. Macrae, Major United
States Army. P. Vous Radowitz, Lieutenant-Colonel United States Army.
S.P. Lee, Major 6th Regiment Veteran Reserve Corps. M.N. Wiswell,
Colonel Veteran Reserve Corps. B.P. DeHart, Colonel 128th Indiana
Volunteers. S.H. Lathrop, Lieutenant-Colonel, A.I.G. Albert Heath,
Lieutenant-Colonel 100th Regiment Indiana Volunteers.